An enterprise (e.g., a business, a multi-national company, a corporation, an organization, a group of organizations, virtual organizations, etc.) may employ many information technologies (e.g., data storage systems, security systems, encryption methods, etc) to sustain numerous data processing and/or data storage infrastructures, networks, systems, devices, and/or operations.
A data processing system (e.g., a computer, a calculator, a supercomputer, a robotic apparatus) may record data in a non-volatile storage device (e.g., computer memory that can retain the stored information even when not powered) and/or a volatile storage device (e.g., computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information). The volatile storage device may be a random access memory (RAM) device, a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device. The non-volatile storage device may be a peripheral unit (e.g., an optical disk, a magnetic disk, a magnetic tape and/or a flash memory card) that holds data. The storage device may be a hard disk, a SCSI device, a disk array (e.g., a RAID device) which may communicate (e.g., transfer, receive, and/or process data) with the data processing system through input/output channels of a central processing unit of the data processing system.
The storage device may be coupled to an enterprise storage system (e.g., a Storage Area Network (SAN)) that retrieves, archives, and recovers data of an enterprise. The storage device may also be coupled to a network (e.g., a Network-Attached Storage device). The storage device may also be coupled to a file system (e.g., a system to archive, to retrieve, to distribute, to modify, and/or to share files).
Additionally, the data processing system may employ a Logical Volume Management to allocate a space (e.g., a capacity to store data) of the storage device. The Logical Volume Management may include a physical volume (e.g., a hard disk, a hard disk partition, a LUN (Logical Unit Number)) to hold information (e.g., data). The physical volume may be in the form of a recording medium (e.g., a physical material that holds information expressed in a recording format). The Logical Volume Management may also include a logical volume (e.g., an abstraction and/or a virtualization of the physical volume, an equivalent of a UNIX partition). The logical volume may be a space of the storage device (e.g., a hard disk, a disk array, a hard disk partition).
The logical volume may be defined by a process applied to the physical volume. The physical volume may include an address space (e.g., amount of memory that can be addressed and/or mapped) which may be divided into physical extents (e.g., data segments of equal size (e.g., in number of bytes)) and may be rearranged and modified to form an address space of the logical volume. The address space of the logical volume may be characterized as a table to provide mappings between a logical address of the logical volume and a physical address of the physical volume. The logical volume may perform certain functions of the physical volume (e.g., associate with a file system, a Network-attached storage device, a swap file, a boot file, a block device (e.g., MS-DOS device file, a UNIX special file)).
Some logical volume management may also implement a snapshot application. The snapshot application may create a point-in-time image of the logical volume by applying a copy-on-write (COW) feature to each physical extent. The logical volume management may copy the physical extent to a table of the point-in-time image prior to writing to the physical extent. The point-in-time image may be stored on the storage device. The point-in-time image may preserve an old version of a logical extent (e.g., a data segment of the same size as the physical extents), which may later be reconstructed by overlaying the copy-on-write table on the current logical extents. The snapshot application may enable a disaster recovery of the physical volume. By keeping track of the changes to the logical volume and/or the physical volume, the snapshot may assist in returning the enterprise to a recent, working state of the physical volume. The point-in-time image may eventually run out of space as changes are made to the logical volume.
Implementing the Logical Volume Management of an enterprise may be a difficult and time-consuming task. As such, supporting the storage requirements for every computer application and data operation of each user in the enterprise is complicated. In addition, implementing the snapshot application may involve numerous data copy operations and may exceed a space allocated for the point-in-time image.